McDowell Jim

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Jim McDowell's unprecedented, interdisciplinary study Hamatsa: The Enigma of Cannibalism on the Pacific Northwest Coast (1997) requires special attention as the only thorough and sober examination of literature pertaining to reports of cannibalism, and practice of ritual (symbolic) cannibalism, and how the two have been frequently confused and misinterpreted. "Kwakiutl cannibalism,"; McDowell writes, "did not represent the type of gastronomic custom that may have existed among certain aboriginal societies in Africa or the South Sea Islands. On the contrary, the eating of human flesh was abhorrent to all Northwest Coast Indians. It was precisely this loathing that made the gruesome rite all the more powerful.";

In compiling the history of European perceptions of allegedly cannibalistic behaviour among coastal Indians, particularly the Kwakiutl, McDowell takes great care to stress that ritual cannibalism is very different than gustatory cannibalism. He repeatedly advises the reader to mistrust the sensational viewpoints of early explorers and cautions the reader to consider motives for apparently bloodthirsty behaviour. "When most of us encounter the word cannibalism, we tend to assume that the only practice being addressed is the one implied by the term's literal meaning: human use of human beings as tasteful, nourishing food. But this is just one of the forms man eating appears to have assumed in the distant past. Known as gustatory or dietary cannibalism, it seems to have occurred rarely, if at all, in certain isolated, widely separated, mainly prehistoric cultures... We still tend to equate cannibalism only with isolated, culturally restricted acts of eating human flesh. But, in its ritualistic forms, such behaviour - both simulated and actual - conveyed profound metaphors for timeless metaphysical messages about spiritual renewal.";

The first European to declare in print that Northwest Coast Aboriginals engaged in cannibalism was the German sailor Heinrich Zimmerman who served under Captain James Cook aboard the Resolution. In 1782, Zimmerman published his journal in which he stated the Mowachaht at Nootka Sound had "dried human flesh which they ate with relish and which they wished us to try."; One of the first English-speaking mariners to make much the same claim was the American sailor on the same voyage, John Ledyard, who recorded in his 1783 book that that hospitable Aboriginals had offered a roasted human arm and that he had tasted it. "We intimated to our hosts that what we had tasted was bad,"; he wrote. When Captain Cook's journal was published posthumously in 1784, describing his month-long stay at Nootka Sound in 1778, he described considerable trade in body parts but stopped short of ascribing the practice of cannibalism because he himself hadn't witnessed it. James Strange, the second English captain to visit Nootka, recorded meeting Chief Maquinna's son in law, Callicum, who tried to sell him three hands and a head. Callicum supposedly told Strange these items were good for eating. Callicum "very composedly put one of the hands in his mouth and, stripping it through his teeth, tore off a considerable piece of flesh, which he immediately devoured with much apparent relish.";

As the ensign who served under Captain James Strange, Alexander Walker later interviewed John MacKay, the first European to see how the Indians at Nootka lived during the winter months when their most important ceremonies were held. Walker's much revised journal, unpublished until 1982, offers rare eyewitness testimonies. "We saw many bare skulls in the possession of these people and one [with] the flesh and hair upon it; and which was still bloody. They ate part of this raw before us, and as usual expressed the highest relish for the food. Upon another occasion they produced an arm half roasted, feeding on it in the same manner."; In 1788, the English fur trader John Meares recorded his outright suspicions of cannibalism. "We were very much disposed to believe that Maquinna himself was a cannibal."; Meares learned from two chiefs that Maquinna feasted on a slave 'every moon.' In 1789, the second mate aboard the Lady Washington, Robert Haswell, also avowed cannibalism occurred at Nootka. "These people are canables and eat the flesh of their vanqu[i]shed enemies and frequently of their slaves who they kill in cool blud.";

In 1789, Spanish explorer Esteban Jose Martinez reached Nootka where his crew noted Maquinna ate little boys and girls captured in war. In March of 1803, Maquinna massacred the crew of the English brigantine Boston except for two sailors, an older seaman named John Thompson and a 19-year-old armourer, John Jewitt. The journal Jewitt published after his two years in captivity contains the first detailed descriptions of how Maquinna's winter rituals and grisly practices might, in fact, have been religious ceremonies.

After analyzing early explorers' accounts with skepticism, McDowell notes the first person to conduct an ethnographic study of Northwest Coast Indians was Gilbert Malcolm Sproat in 1861. After living with Indians in the Alberni area and learning their language, Sproat was similarly convinced, from hearsay and from observing ritualistic sacrifices, that cannibalism existed. Much-travelled Methodist minister and mariner Thomas Crosby first reported in his memoirs the tradition of the hamatsa: ceremonial man eaters in secret societies; geologist and ethnographer George Dawson found remnants of cannibalistic rites and Norwegian ethnographer Johan Adrian Jacobsen also observed cannibal dance ceremonies in Quatsino Sound.

The anthropologist Franz Boas and his informant George Hunt outlined the hamatsa traditions derived from the legend of Man Eater at the North End of the World and Boas claimed the Kwakiutl custom of devouring men was introduced by the Heiltsuq or Heiltsuk that resided from Gardner Canal to Rivers Inlet. George Hunt provided extensive personal evidence of contemporary hamatsa ceremonies, including testimony from Hamasaka, the principal hamatsa at Fort Rupert, that he had participated in 32 corpse eating feasts. In 1902, Hunt photographed a re-enactment of a hamatsa initiate ceremony. Relying on Boas' documentation, controversial ethno photographer Edward S. Curtis also staged a series of photos between 1910 and 1915 to illustrate the legacy of cannibal practices. In 1930, Boas tried to incorporate similar scenes into his documentary film, The Kwakiutl of British Columbia. McDowell uses the first half of his book to very cautiously lead the reader to presume hamatsa ceremonies existed as a sophisticated form of ritual cannibalism.

The attribution of cannibalism has often occurred as a projection of moral superiority. McDowell cites Freud's 1913 work, Totem and Taboo, in which Freud theorizes that primordial incest is the foundation of totemism and religion. Freud examined the psychoanalytic origins of cannibalism by suggesting that when the earliest stage of human society was the 'primal horde', the violent and jealous father kept all the females for himself and drove his sons into exile and sexual celibacy. Taking their revenge, the rebellious sons killed and ate the primal father. "The violent primal father had doubtless been the feared and envied model of each of the brothers,"; said Freud. "In the act of devouring him they accomplished their identification with him, and each of them acquired a portion of his strength."; Freud suggests the sons regularly commemorated and replicated the original patricide by ritual slaughter and consumption of a totemic animal. According to McDowell, Freud said in 1946 that this mythical totemic feast "which is perhaps mankind's earliest festival"; marked the crucial turning point in the evolutionary development of human beings - the "beginning... of social organization, or moral restrictions, and of religion."; In further chapters McDowell examines how Freud's viewpoint enhances the significance of ceremonial cannibalism. "Totemic religion,"; said Freud, "not only comprised expressions of remorse and attempts at atonement, it also served as a remembrance of the triumph over the father. Satisfaction over that triumph led to the institution of the memorial festival of the totem meal, in which the restrictions of deferred obedience no longer held.";

If this all seems far out, just think of Catholics eating wafers and drinking Christ's blood in church. McDowell concludes the winter potlatch, highlighted by the cannibal dance, unites all creatures within a unitary, coherent system of behaviour that reflects a basic morality. "The Kwakiutl,"; he writes, "believed that humans survive only because the spirits gave them food. In return, people were obligated to give lives, in the form of human souls, to the spirits. The transformation of rebirth occurred through two processes: vomit and fire."; He posits that the cannibal dance ceremony - still practiced in derivative forms - re-enacts the primal conflict between hunger and its submission to collective ritual, between narcissistic desire and socialization. "The taming of hamatsas,"; McDowell says, "resembles the socialization of children."; Once humans have reaffirmed their willingness to allow the reborn spirit to live among them, the hamatsa retires to the sacred inner room and vomits up the transformed flesh, "an act symbolic of his transformation from a destructive to a creative being.";

McDowell compares the hamatsa to medieval knights sent to slay dragons; emissaries sent to confront the embodiments of darkness, the forces we fear most. Because he feels contemporary 'First World' society is well on its way to devouring itself, McDowell believes ritual cannibalism - as a metaphor for our condition - provides a valuable perspective from which we may be able to forge new respect for our environment.

A former teacher in the United States, McDowell served as the first director of the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver when it was transformed into an inner-city community centre. He is also the author of Peace Conspiracy, Yoshiru Fujimura: A Warrior-Businessman (Irvine, California: McBo Corporation, 1993). It's the true story of an obscure Japanese naval commander who unsuccessfully plotted Japan's early exit from World War II in the spring of 1945. A peace activist in his later years, Fujimura founded the Jupiter Corporation which specialized in aircraft and aerospace equipment. He died in 1992. As well, McDowell has published a study of the Spanish explorer José Narvaez.

His illustrated book The History of Sidney Island's Three Names (JEM Publications, 2011) provides an account of the island's Saanich and colonial names, and challenges its current designation.

Father August Brabant, Saviour or Scourge? by Jim McDowell (Ronsdale Press $24.95)

Mention Jim McDowell in the milieu of writers festivals, grants and Facebook-fostered book launches and you'll likely draw a blank.

But his illuminating investigation of alleged cannibalism on the West Coast, Hamatsa: The Enigma of Cannibalism on the Pacific Northwest Coast (Ronsdale 1997) easily ranks as one of the great, under-acknowledged works of B.C. historical literature.

In that book, McDowell painstakingly reveals how the practice of ritual (symbolic) cannibalism on the West Coast has been misinterpreted, largely due to untrustworthy and ignorant accounts of early mariners, which were recycled by the settlers and colonists who followed.

"Cannibalism did not represent the type of gastronomic custom that may have existed among certain aboriginal societies in Africa or the South Sea Islands,"; he concludes. "On the contrary, the eating of human flesh was abhorrent to all Northwest Coast Indians. It was precisely this loathing that made the gruesome rite all the more powerful.";

Following his acclaimed biographical study, José Narvaez: The Forgotten Explorer. Including his narrative of a voyage on the Northwest Coast in 1788 (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1998), McDowell has generated another definitive work, this time focusing on one of the most fascinating and controversial missionaries of the West Coast, August Joseph Brabant.

Not surprisingly, Father August Brabant, Saviour or Scourge? is another thoroughly documented, even-handed account that reveals Brabant's life and thoughts through his substantial writings, as well as the author's meticulous research and observations.

As an idealistic, 24-year-old missionary, Brabant left Belgium for Victoria in 1869 and underwent a long apprenticeship in Victoria before he was sent to live and work amongst the Hesquiahts in a remote coastal village, 275-km northwest of Victoria.

Having first visited the West Coast of Vancouver Island with Right Reverend Charles Seghers in 1874, and having just returned from Sitka, Alaska, Brabant arrived at Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island as a 29-year-old Catholic priest, aboard the twenty-eight-ton schooner Surprise, and he proceeded to stubbornly operate "the poorest church in Christendom"; at Hesquiaht, at the north end of Clayoquot Sound, about a four-hour boat trip from Tofino, from 1875 to 1908.
Not long after his arrival in 1875, Brabant's fingers in his right hand were deformed after he was attacked by Hesquiaht Chief Matlahaw who, fearful he had contracted smallpox from Brabant, shot Brabant twice using Brabant's own gun. First Matlahaw shot Brabant in the right hand. While the priest was cleaning his injury in a creek, Matlahaw sprayed the missionary with buckshot in his back and shoulder.

Brabant was rescued by a British man-of-war, H.M.S. Rocket, and recovered in Victoria. His return to Hesquiaht greatly enhanced his reputation as a formidable force. Speaking Chinook (an intermediate pidgin language) and using a local translator, he held Mass and taught the Lord's Prayer, stubbornly opposing Nuu-chah-nulth shamans.

"They blame me for the absence of food. They laugh at the doctrine which I teach. I can do nothing by making the sign of the Cross. I am neither a white man nor an Indian,"; he wrote. "I am the Chigha, the devil.";

Nevertheless, Brabant stubbornly persisted. Brabant's memoir of his missionary work first appeared in serialized form in The Messenger of the Sacred Heart. His serialized reports were republished collectively as Vancouver Islands and its Missions, 1874-1900 (Messenger of the Sacred Heart Press, 1900) which formed the basis of a 1920 biography by Reverend Van Der Heyden .

"Because six versions of Father August Joseph Brabant's life were written between 1900 and 1983,"; McDowell notes in his preface, "the reader may justifiably ask: Why do we need a seventh? What is new or different about this one?";

If words such as 'well-balanced' and 'meticulous' don't stir you to pick up this book, how about 'surprisingly gripping reading' and 'intriguing characters'?

Father August Brabant: Saviour or Scourge? is not only a biography, it is a classic tale of conflicting ideologies embodied by two men.
Brabant was determined to save and civilize indigenous people who he considered his "children."; Meanwhile the Hesquiaht knew they were a proud culture that could trace its heritage back thousands of years.

Packed with deception, heroism, murder, white-knuckle adventure on the seas, pestilences, battles and shipwrecks, this examination of Brabant's character simultaneously documents the changing times for aboriginals, their increasing contact with Europeans, their efforts to resist acculturation, and the slow swing to commercial sealing and a cash economy.

In his sidebars, footnotes, sizeable appendix and endnotes, McDowell describes many of the beliefs, practices and lore of the aboriginal population. For example, Transformers are supernatural beings whose power pervades the world and whose spiritual energy can be accessed by unique human beings such as shaman, powerful chiefs, and other avatars.

The historic photos are well-chosen, although most readers may yearn for more to break up the sometimes daunting text.

Today, we can condemn this arrogant priest for living and preaching among the Hesquiaht for so long without bothering to master their language, yet made sweeping assumptions about being understood and winning converts.

In his ignorance, Father Brabant made many fundamental errors that are still being made by zealous missionaries: pushing to convert without first understanding or respecting, and focusing on salvation without taking service into account.

However, we can also appreciate the hardships that these early Christian crusaders bore. Many times Brabant slept on the bare ground when travelling, went without meals, and risked his life in dugout canoes on long open-sea journeys.

Known for building several log churches, Brabant recruited indigenous labour, transported building materials by canoe, felled timber and cut lumber by hand, acted as architect and supervisor, and thrived on the exhausting work.

He watched the Hesquiahts suffer through famines when the sea was too rough for the men to fish; he survived more than one attempted murder and numerous threats to his authority; he serviced the sick-albeit ineffectually - 24/7, and yet he endured.";

Shored up as he was by his faith and the inviolability of his mission, Brabant weathered repeated setbacks and disappointments, more than a few depressions, and moved stubbornly toward his goal.

He viewed Protestant missionaries who arrived after him as devils who were 'perverting' his children. They were moving in and building churches nearby, giving the Catholic church another perceived challenge. Brabant's response was to open the first "Indian"; residential school on Vancouver Island.
Christie School opened in 1900 on Meares Island, linking the priest's name forever with a shameful history.
McDowell is critical of Brabant's attitudes and actions as a missionary, including his role in launching a notorious residential school.

Nevertheless, his criticism is balanced with historical, social, and political explanations that help the reader understand Brabant's behaviour.
McDowell also credits the priest for his invaluable writings and records.
Prior to turning his hand to Pacific Rim historical subjects, Jim McDowell served as the first director of the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver, forging the inner-city community centre that today remains a remarkable gathering place for the under-privileged.
978-1-55380-189-4

José narváez, was born in Cadiz, the great port city of Spain, in 1768. Much like Captain James Cook and explorer/mapmaker David Thompson, Narváez was an exceptionally intelligent boy and so he was accepted into the Spanish Royal Naval Academy for Midshipmen at the age of fourteen.

By the ripe old age of twenty-three, Narváez had served on a battleship during prolonged battles with the English Navy for control of Gibraltar; spent three years based in Havana, serving on supply vessels bound for Spanish military outposts like New Orleans, Campeche, Mexico and Trujillo, Honduras; and exchanged "a barrel of wine, some chocolate and other things to get them to tell us more"; with Russian traders on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

According to biographer Jim McDowell in Uncharted Waters: The Explorations of José Narváez (1768-1840), Narváez was the first Spaniard to engage in face-to-face contact with the feared, fur-trading Russians in the Alaskan Northwest. He was also a crucial contributor on a Spanish team which explored and mapped Clayoquot Sound, Barkley Sound and the Southern Gulf Islands, all for the first time.

Narváez was then directed to venture into fog-shrouded Juan de Fuca Strait to map its entirety and, most particularly, to ascertain whether any great river flowing from the east into a fabled inland sea could be claimed by Spain in its quest for the Northwest Passage. So it was that José Narváez became the first European to reconnoitre the interior of Juan de Fuca Strait in 1789 and, two years later, he was the first European to sail across the northern inland gulf of what we now know as the Salish Sea-as well as the first to map it.

In doing so, José Narváez was indisputably the first European to set eyes upon the site of the present day city of Vancouver.

The description of the first contact between the Musqueum and Narváez near Chitchulayuk aka Punta de Langara-now known as Point Grey-is emblematic of our colonial history.

Armed not with bows and arrows, the Musqueam brought the pale strangers "several kinds of fish"; including freshly caught salmon, deer and elk meat, edible wild plants, berries and fruits, fresh water and firewood.
In exchange, they "received scraps of copper, pieces of iron and barrel hoops."; Not to mention having their home renamed and claimed out from under them, it almost goes without saying.

The artist aboard, José Cardero, would make preparations for his subsequent portrait of Musqueam leader Qeyupulenuxw.

Captain George Vancouver would arrive a full year later and declare himself "mortified"; to discover Narváez had already mapped the region.

Skilled cartographers and hardy navigators/pilots like Narváez were highly valued by the Viceroy for New Spain, based in Mexico City, because Spain had competitors.

Spanish navigators and their largely Mexican crews were conducting explorations and making maps of the West Coast as far north as 60 degrees 18' North latitude and as far east as 152 degrees 39' West longitude, well before the British arrived. But we all know that history is written by the victorious.

Fortunately for Jim McDowell-and now us-history is also remembered and documented by the survivors, including a direct descendant of Narváez living in California. Luis Marmolejo-Meillon gave the author generous access to Narváez family history and genealogy, including maps and charts, as did UBC's Rare Books and Special Collections, a treasure trove of early B.C. exploration history, among many other archives in Mexico, America and Spain.

In this lively yet painstakingly researched book, McDowell offers a seemingly effortless synthesis of facts, political context and biographical particulars to present the first fully realized biography of the achievements of José Narváez. The generous number of illustrations, including hand-drawn maps and early drawings of First Nations leaders, enhance the narrative as do the appendices and footnotes, many of which are fascinating reading by themselves.

For example, Appendix E is a translation by one of three Spanish translators McDowell worked with while researching Narváez. It is the 'Manifest of the Santa Saturnina,' showing the numbers and ranks of the people on board, accounting for every sail, anchor, cannon and firearm (130 bags of grapeshot, fyi), 24 barrels of water and the dimensions of the schooner itself.

The only element missing from this ship's manifest is the supply of foodstuffs, which this reviewer was keen to learn about, knowing of the Spanish fondness for red wine and chocolate. (Had I been disguised as the single servantor as one of the two boys on board, I would certainly have gravitated to the galley.) The manifest declared that the Santa Saturnina was commanded by "Second Piloto Don José Narváez, when he sailed from this Port of the Holy Cross of Nootka.";

Once again, the anchorage known as Cala de Los Amigos (aka Friendly Cove) on Nootka Island was at the centre of the action as the Europeans jostled for trading and religious supremacy and claim-staking territory for their respective thrones.

Historians and other writers about New World history must be relentless detectives with access to a bevy of translators, adept at Latin, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Russian and English, rendered in medieval dialects. For any maritime book, it also helps immensely to have actual experience or good advice from sailors in the challenging conditions of the north Pacific. Handwriting analysis is a critical skill as well.

McDowell has been able to distinguish when Narváez had made a map and when another person had copied it. He alerts us to ambitious skullduggery or short-sighted navigational decisions by discreetly inserting the word "inexplicably"; before recounting the act of another piloto bolting from the rest of the team prematurely in order to present maps to an impatient commander or the latter making a particularly stunned navigational error, all with a scholarly straight face.

Among Jim McDowell's six books is a briefer 1998 book on Narváez that was published by Arthur H. Clark Co., based in Spokane, WA. There were obviously too many tantalizing questions raised by researching and writing the earlier book which led to this fully-documented biography that should give Narváez his rightful place among Malaspina, Quadra, Galiano, Valdes and Vancouver.

The book is dedicated to the memory of John Crosse, sailor, researcher, writer and friend of the author, whose own unpublished manuscript on Narváez is held in UBC's Special Collections.

Once the British had gained ascendancy in the Pacific Northwest, hundreds of Spanish and First Nations place names were erased. McDowell's biography is an eloquent and informed contribution to cultural diversity and accurate colonial history in what is now British Columbia and will appeal to sailors, scholars, and armchair historical detectives alike.

978-1-55380-434-5
Caroline Woodward

Qeyupulenuxw portrait

Article (2008)

The government of Spain has presented the city of Vancouver and Musqueam leaders with reproductions of what is believed to be the the oldest surviving image of a person in what is now Vancouver.

The drawing, entitled Jefe de la punta de Langara -- Chief of Point Langara -- was made by Jose Cardero, who was on board Alcala Galiano's 1792 expedition. It's thought to depict a Musqueam leader on the site of what is now the Musqueam reserve in Vancouver's Point Grey area, which was once called Point Langara.

Musqueam band councillor Delbert Guerin said his best guess is that the mysterious figure in the picture is Qeyupulenuxw (also spelled Giyeplénexw), "the famous warrior who brought our warriors together and defended against the raiding northern peoples."

Qeyupulenuxw -- whose name eventually evolved into the word Capilano -- wouldn't actually have been a chief, Guerin said. Oral history suggests the Musqueam had no system of chiefs until the establishment of reserves.

Cardero Street, in the West End of Vancouver, was named after Cardero Channel between Vancouver Island the mainland, north of Campbell River.

The channel was named after Jose Cardero.

Mayor Sam Sullivan said he first saw a rough copy of the portrait during a visit to the reserve.

"I was fascinated with it," Sullivan said. "I realized when I looked into the face of that person, it was the first-ever recorded picture of a resident of the city."

Musqueam leaders offered to contact Spanish officials to request reproductions of the original, held in a vault in a Madrid museum.

Mariano Alonso-Burin, Spain's ambassador to Canada, presented copies of the portrait to Sullivan and Musqueam leaders this week at Vancouver's City Hall. Sullivan said the "haunting picture" will be hung in a prominent place.